Would it be so bad if football here did go bust?

The only crash heard in Premier League boardrooms used to be when someone dropped a tray of prawn canapes.

Football is suddenly different. It's like watching a video of Max Mosley with a blindfolded dominatrix. You know the bottom is going to be hit at some point, you're just not quite sure when.

Heading for a fall: Even Manchester United, with their £600m debt, are not immune to the problems caused by the credit crunch.

But the pain is coming. As the economy goes into reverse, as families fear for their jobs and pensions, the non-essential items are the first to go; and top-flight football is about to find out just how non-essential it can be.

In this climate of recession, fewer season tickets will be renewed; there won't be as many trips down the motorway to the away game; the new replica kit stays in the not-so-megastore and satellite television subscriptions are cancelled as people decide to catch the big games down the pub instead.

For businesses, this lack of confidence manifests itself on a grander scale. With budget cuts and job losses taking hold, there can be no justification for lavish corporate entertainment. Spending on marketing and promotions is slashed, leaving clubs with fewer sponsor deals and less advertising spend. The Barclays Premier League is already looking a little less blue chip.

For the fat cat owners, it's time to cough up an unpleasant fur ball. It's the end of instant jackpots from property deals and stadium relocations. There will be no guaranteed billion-pound television contract to finance ridiculous wage bills when the contracts are renewed. Even the wealthiest men in the world will think twice about frittering away their millions on the big boy's toy of a football club.

As ever, the game reduces the situation to petty politics. When UEFA chief Michel Platini decries the fact that Premier League clubs are swimming in debt, it is an 'anti- English' tirade. When the Football Association chairman Lord Triesman worries aloud, he is siding with UEFA against the Premier League in a power struggle.

That's all very well, but programmes still cost £10, it's £7 a burger and £4.50 a pint. Families are debating whether they can afford to hand over the £100-agame average the top division squeezes from their wallets, not whether they like Lord Triesman more than Richard Scudamore.

Since its inception, the Premier League has set about screwing as much out of the paying public as possible. The talk has been of brands and products. It's all very well seeing another billionaire waltz into the directors' box, but what's the point when ticket prices still go up?

Right now, Premier League clubs should be richer than ever, yet they are in debt to the tune of £3billion. The League insists this is a 'serviceable' amount, but that is the kind of madcap economics that has seen the humiliated banks go round with a begging bowl for survival.

Unsurprisingly, vast swathes of top-flight football are in a panic. Relegation or failure to qualify for the Champions League has even more disastrous consequences since they will find it harder to defer their loans because the lenders are scrambling to stay afloat too.

The scale of club debt is astonishing. The bubble has burst at West Ham. Thanks to the collapse of the Icelandic banks, the Hammers are threatening to disappear faster than the polar ice caps after their owner saw £230million melt away.

Liverpool are owned by two Americans who hate each other and bought the club with £350m borrowed from struggling banks. Now they have seen the new stadium plan that would service the loan collapse and are desperate to escape. A

s everyone knows, Newcastle United are up for grabs, with Mike Ashley - the Gerald Ratner of the modern game - pleading for someone, anyone, to rid him of this club. Having valued it at £480m, he is now prepared to take £320m, or £300m, or even £290m; it' s plummeting by the day.

Icy times: West Ham United chairman Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson is in danger of suffering meltdown at Upton Park.

And Tottenham's disastrous performance on the pitch is exceeded only by the losses of owner Joe Lewis, who saw £300m wiped off his fortune with the collapse of Bear Stearns and is rumoured to want to bail out of White Hart Lane.

The For Sale signs are about to go up at Portsmouth, too, it seems, mainly because owner Alexandre Gaydamak is worried he cannot fund a wage bill that is 90 per cent - 90 per cent! - of club turnover.

The numbers are equally staggering elsewhere: Wigan Athletic owe £45m and chairman Dave Whelan's JJB stores are in trouble. Arsenal are servicing a £268m debt; at Aston Villa it's £63m and Fulham £181m. All of which are dwarfed by Manchester United's staggering liability of £600m.

They might all find a buyer to rescue them, but they might not, and Gordon Brown isn't going to step in and part-nationalise football. Think they are too big to fall? I dare say you would have said the same about the High Street banks a few days ago.

With UEFA chief Platini attempting to put checks on foreign ownership, not even Chelsea and Manchester City can remain smug amid the chaos. Roman Abramovich saw hundreds of millions wiped off his fortune last week. As for those sheikhs, prices per barrel of oil have practically halved on the world market. Should these sugar daddies ever decide to consolidate their financial positions by cutting back on the football expenditure, these outfits would be sunk overnight.

And how is the game's governing body dealing with it? The Football Association has certainly taken great delight in highlighting the Premier League's spend-spend-spend attitude, but it has a hefty £340m mortgage of its own thanks to the new Wembley Stadium. Not quite the picture of parsimony they would like to present.

But would it be so bad if the debts were called in? Football learned little from the spectacular demise of Leeds United. It was seen as the failure of one club rather than a symptom of some wider malaise, and £100,000-plus weekly wages are still handed over without a blink.

This credit crunch might be strangling the economy, but a little austerity is long overdue. It's time to get real about the culture of greed that permeates top-flight football in this country. Players' wages cannot continue to go up. If families and ordinary working people are to remain part of football's future, then ticket prices must fall.

It will be interesting to see how many empty seats there are at Middlesbrough's home game against Chelsea this weekend, when the game is also on TV. And how many will turn up for Bolton Wanderers v Blackburn Rovers?

When Germany's game went through a financial meltdown, a more affordable, saner system emerged from the crash. Ticket prices in the Bundesliga are reasonable, the grounds are full and fans have safe standing areas, there is an emphasis on homegrown players and the national team have benefited from the downsizing.

The same could happen here too if the game's authorities are finally forced to take their heads out of their assets.

Just do it, Fabio

It looks like it might finally happen and Fabio Capello is to bite the bullet all his predecessors dodged.

The tedious debate about whether and how Steven Gerrard can link up with Frank Lampard (right) will hopefully be redundant against Belarus tomorrow, when Liverpool's captain has to make way, as was requested on this page a fortnight ago.

It is the right call. Lampard is in stupendous form and deserves his place.

Can we not knock it?

There is a lucrative cottage industry for former England managers declaring they had 'The Impossible Job'.

How convenient that would be for them all. Graham Taylor (right) has been banging on about it again in a documentary called England Expects.

Now I like Graham, he's good company and speaks well on the BBC, but he's been peddling this line for years and radio and television producers keep falling for it. The media did not force Taylor into disastrous team selections.

They did not make Glenn Hoddle employ a nutcase 'faith-healer', write a book that wrecked dressingroom morale or declare the 'disabled were paying for the sins of a previous life'.

Kevin Keegan walked out of his own accord, as ever, and the media did not insist that Sven Goran Eriksson should explore the warm front of a scraggy weather woman or work his way through the FA typing pool. Nor did they shove Eriksson out the door for saying the game was corrupt, the FA did that. Steve McClaren? Let's not even go there.

Mercifully, Fabio Capello is putting the boot into this theory right now. He's making the job look decidedly possible by saying sensible things and making logical team selections.

And where will you find Hoddle and Taylor these days? In the media, naturally - complaining about it.

FA missing the point over Cole

The Wembley crowd did not boo Ashley Cole just because he made a mistake. They booed him because they cannot stand him.

All Cole's awful back-pass against Kazakhstan did was present the audience with the ideal opportunity to remind him of that fact.

These people are not 'crazy', as an FA spokesman complained, unless it was a reference to the ticket prices they had paid. They had no need to feel 'ashamed' about it either, despite the entreaties of Rio Ferdinand.

When Cole (right) admits he was crazy to issue his revolting wage complaints on leaving Arsenal, or even to wear that hideous Bacofoil suit and flaunt his bling in OK! magazine; when he confesses he is ashamed that he turned his back on referee Mike Riley in that infamous act of petulance; maybe then, when he does all that, the English public might give him a break.